If you’ve been holding money aside for Apple hardware this fall, the next four Fridays are about to get busy.
In this weekend’s Power On, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says Apple is planning a “reset” at its retail stores from the evening of Thursday, November 5 into Friday, November 6, which implies new signage and new products going onto store tables. Since Apple’s next round of Mac announcements is expected the week before, he reads November 6 as the day at least some of those machines go on sale. 9to5Mac, AppleInsider and MacRumors all picked it up today.
Slot that in with the dates Apple has already announced and you get four launch Fridays back to back.
The calendar
- Friday, October 23: iPhone Duo. Official. Pre-orders opened October 16 and slipped to January 25 within half an hour, so anyone ordering now is waiting until 2027.
- Friday, October 30: HomePod mini 2. Official, $149. MacRumors says it’s still widely available for launch-day delivery in the U.S. Siri AI won’t be on it at launch; Apple says that comes in a later software update.
- Friday, November 6: new Macs, and maybe an iPad. Not announced. This is the date Gurman’s store-reset detail points to.
- Friday, November 13: HomeView and the new Apple TV 4K. Official, $299 each. Some tabletop HomeView colors and the Apple TV have already slipped to late November or early December delivery in parts of the U.S., per MacRumors.
What’s expected on November 6
None of this is confirmed by Apple yet. Based on current reporting, the candidates are:
- The redesigned MacBook Pro with a Tandem OLED touchscreen, reportedly a small Dynamic Island, and a body Gurman has called significantly lighter. 9to5Mac’s summary of the reporting says it sticks with the M5 Pro and M5 Max, because Apple is skipping the high-end M6 chips to speed up M7.
- An M6 update for the 14-inch MacBook Pro and the iMac, according to MacRumors’ summary of Gurman.
- An iPad mini 8 with an OLED display, which AppleInsider says should also move the front camera to the landscape edge.
MacRumors hedges the list with an “and/or,” and so should you. Gurman’s case for November 6 rests on the store reset and Apple’s habit of shipping on the Friday after an announcement, not on any word from Apple.
When we’ll actually know
The announcements are expected on Tuesday, October 27 or Wednesday, October 28. Gurman says Apple has begun inviting media to an October 28 “launch experience” in Los Angeles. That’s when prices, chips and real ship dates should firm up.
What this means if you’re buying
- Thinking about a Mac? Wait ten days. Buying a MacBook Pro or iMac this week, with replacements likely announced on October 27 or 28, is the easiest way to regret a purchase.
- Want the OLED MacBook Pro but worried about the chip? That’s the real question. If the reporting holds, the first touchscreen model launches on M5-generation silicon, and a lot of people will want to see how that compares with whatever Apple says about M7 timing.
- Stacking home gear? HomePod mini 2 is the one you can still get on day one. If HomeView is on your list, order sooner rather than later, since its delivery windows are already moving.
Four Fridays in a row would be an unusually dense stretch for Apple, and it puts a lot of hardware into the holiday window at once. The October 27–28 announcements will tell us whether the November 6 piece of it is real.
Reporting reference: MacRumors ↗